


Dialogic Season 2

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Dialogic [3]
Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Jealousy, Male-Female Friendship, Partners to Lovers, Romance, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-18 15:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 16,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18702415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: After watching around to the end of the series (i.e., "Hollander's Woods," because nothing after that exists), and taking some time to watch a few other things during workouts, I'm back around to the beginning of the series again.This story is 24 brief sketches, one for each episode of Season 2, inspired by a line of dialogue from the episode.I did the same thing for Season 1, but there's no reason you couldn't read this story (or any chapter of either story) independent of the others.





	1. Iteration—Deep in Death (2 x 01)

**Author's Note:**

> All the chapters are written and posted at my tumblr; it'll take me a few days to get all 24 up here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn’t know what just happened. 
> 
> He’s gone and come back and gone again, and she thinks she might have taken him back.

 

> _“Fair warning, Detective, I will make you change your mind.“_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Deep in Death (2 x 01)_

 

* * *

She doesn’t know what just happened.

He’s gone and come back and gone again, and she thinks she might have taken him back.

It sounds preposterous in the confines of her head. No less so when she says out loud in the dark of the nearly deserted bullpen.

_I’ll see you tomorrow._

It sounds like nonsense, but so does the apology that her brain seems to have stuck on repeat. It rewinds and lurches forward for the however-many-eth time. It zips back to the moment the shadow of his body fell slantwise across her desk and plays all the way out to the tinny sound of her voice fighting its way out of her body.

It sinks in, and she panics. Her chest and throat are tight. She feels out of herself, like she’s standing a few desks over, watching herself realize that she’s taken him back. She almost expects to hear a shrill, shattering laugh rise up out of one version of herself or the other.

It passes. She teeters on the edge of the eerie, ear-ringing moment, but the two versions of herself snap back together. The threat of laughter dissolves into nothing. It doesn’t quite take the panic with it, though. That takes up residence and gnaws at her from the inside out. It exhausts her, swiftly and utterly, as every defense inside her collapses at once.

She took him back.

It’s terrifying. He hurt her so badly, and her trust was already such a threadbare thing. It’s astonishing and enervating and bewildering. She just wants to lay her head on her desk and sob or scream or laugh until she’s blissfully empty. Until she’s mercifully _through_ this turn of events.

She doesn’t, though. Of course she doesn’t. She stares at the paperwork fanned out across her blotter. She finds the pen still in her hand and a field on John Allen’s case file exactly half filled out. 

She leaves it like that. Everything. She collects herself. She hauls her bag out of the deep desk drawer and pulls on her coat. Every movement is a Herculean effort. She keeps herself moving with the promise of a cab. When the elevator arrives a hundred years later, she lets the back wall of it take the weight of her whole body. Her head tips forward and her eyes slip half closed. 

She almost doesn’t see it—a small white square in the corner. She stoops to retrieve it, though she hardly has the energy. It’s folded tight, in half and half again. It’s creased within an inch of its life.

She undoes the work of other hands. She unfolds it again, then again. She sees his handwriting, just the fact of it at first, not the words. It’s unsurprising, somehow. The familiar slant and slash of block caps are . . . calming.

Her ribs and spine release and cool breath slips all the way into her body. Her mind takes in the words themselves. It takes in the emphatic lines running through the things he rejected and the tentative circles that run around and around what he settled on. _Trust. Respect. Wishes. Deserve. Very. Very. Sorry._

She’s tired, not exhausted, as she folds the paper in half and half again. Her mind is something like quiet, as though the heavy paper has drunk in her own jangling thoughts like good ink. She closes her fingers around it as the elevator dings open and slips it into her pocket. 

She steps out into the echoing precinct lobby and out into the night. She sinks into the back seat of the cab. She strips off her clothes almost the second she’s through her own front door. She leaves them where they fall, an archipelago of weariness and relief stretching from the hall to her bedroom. The tightly folded square of paper comes with her. It finds its way into the nightstand drawer.

She manages a few minutes, head bowed, under the scalding stream of the shower. She sinks into bed, still damp from it. She snaps off the light. She lies on her back, palms pressed against her ribs. She sinks into nearly dreamless sleep.

She’s taken him back. 


	2. Apperception—The Double Down (2 x 02)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To the extent that he thinks about it at all, he’s always thought of the universe—of fate—as a mostly benign entity.

> _“Knowing_ why _matters.”_
> 
> _—Kate Beckett, The Double Down (2 x02)_

* * *

To the extent that he thinks about it at all, he’s always thought of the universe—of fate—as a mostly benign entity. Given his life, or at least his adult life, it would be disingenuous not to. But lately—since she’s taken him back—he wonders if the universe isn’t kind of a dick.

He’s only just resigned himself to closing the door on her mother’s case. He’s looked back and thought through the painful clichés he was acting out: Brilliant millionaire swoops in with his cash and his connections and resolves the central tragedy of her life. He’s let his own belated shame—and every scorching truth from her mouth—burn away every single worn-out illusion, and he’s only just come to understand that it is and must and will be her choice to walk away. He’s only just accepted it, and here she is bringing it up.

_This one reminds me of my mom’s case._

He freezes. He sits beside her, stupid and silent, as she talks about what Christina Marx must be going through. He sits beside her, struck dumb by this dickish twist of cosmic irony.

He’s struggled with it since he’s been back. He’s been knocked around by revelation after revelation. That she’d closed herself off so absolutely after she walked away from him that day in the hospital. That she hadn’t even shared the bare minimum of what he’d found with Lanie or anyone. He’s been knocked flat by the realization that she might have no idea that he’d found anything of note at all, because she wasn’t listening after those four awful words: and the terrible betrayal bound up in them.

_It’s about your mother._

He’s struggled with what conveniently _sounds_ like the right thing in the abstract—to make sure any choice she makes, she makes with all the facts available—and the reality that the choice she’s long since made is one he has to respect. He’s finally steeled himself to living with the uncertainty, and here comes the universe with one more hard knock, because it seems as if she does know. 

He’s neck-deep in things he wants to say. Perched there on the desk with the panorama of two boards stretching out before them, he’s inundated with minutiae, theories, questions,assurances, but he freezes.

It feels like a test. Not from her. Not at all. She stares straight ahead, and every slow, stuttering word costs her dearly. She’s suffering. She’s reaching out, he thinks, though he’s not sure even she understands that.

He certainly doesn’t understand it. Their too-recent past has well and truly humbled him, and sitting there, _paralyzed_ by the way his meddling—his fucking betrayal—ripples out forever, he can’t understand: Why him? Why not Lanie or one of the boys or Montgomery? Why not anyone in her life she must have a million reasons to trust more than him?

It feels like the universe testing him and he’s doomed to fail. 


	3. (Un)Forgettable—Inventing the Girl (2 x 03)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She hates this light. It seems even more eternal than usual right now, which might have something to do with the fact that the interior of her car is eerily quiet at the moment. He’s eerily quiet.

> _“Jealousy is a classic motive.”_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Inventing the Girl (2 x03)_

 

* * *

She hates this light. It seems even more eternal than usual right now, which might have something to do with the fact that the interior of her car is eerily quiet at the moment. _He’s_ eerily quiet.

It’s totally unexpected after the backstage chaos of Teddy Farrow’s fashion show. _S_ he’d braced herself for a long ride back to the precinct filled with wall-to-wall commentary on the hot women of high fashion, and here he is, eerily quiet at the world’s longest stoplight.

He’s staring down at the eyeliner scrawled across his palm like it’s in hieroglyphics or something. It’s weird. She doesn’t understand the fixation, even though it’s smudged now. The girlish curlicues bleed into one another, turning sevens into nines and threes into sagging snowmen, but that’s not the problem. She knows for a fact that that he not-so-surreptitiously tapped the number into his phone while they stood by waiting for selected parts of Sierra Goodwin to be tucked and taped and zipped into the outlandishly unstable wedding gown.

It’s weird, that he’s not babbling for once, but whatever.

“It’s really not your color.” She bites the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t meant to say anything. She’d meant to enjoy the blessed, unexpected silence and leave him to ponder the mysteries of Rina’s flourishes. 

“Definitely not,” he says absently.“Black is too harsh for blue eyes. Navy works as a neutral or copper to make things really pop for evening.” He feels the force of her glare and looks up, finally.“What? I’ve lived with women my whole life.”

She answers with an eye roll, but he’s already back to contemplating . . . whatever it is he’s contemplating. The light finally changes. She punches the accelerator a little more emphatically than necessary.

“I can’t place her,” he blurts as if the forward momentum has tipped the words right out of his mouth. 

“Who, _Rina_?” The name comes out in a breathy imitation.

“Rina. Yeah. Even the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

He’s distracted again. She should be grateful for that. She has less than no interest in him turning his attention to her bout of sudden-onset snark over something that affects her not at all. But apparently she’s not grateful.

“Maybe you didn’t know it.”

The light ahead flicks yellow. It’s another long one, and her foot goes reflexively for the gas. Unfortunately, the senior citizen in front of her has other ideas, and she winds up mashing the brake.

“Her name?” The jerk of his body against the seatbelt chops the question in half. “Why wouldn’t I have known her name?”

“Gee, I dunno, Castle,” she snorts. “Must be hard to remember _every_ locust.”

“Locust?”

His head swivels toward her. She sees him out of the corner of her eye, blinking in confusion.It prompts an odd surge of satisfaction, rather than the alarm she should definitely feel over the shift in focus from the mysteries of Rina to the more perplexing puzzle of whatever’s going on with her shocking inability to enjoy _not_ being the center of his attention for once.

“Locust,” he repeats with a smile and a mild shake of his head as he gets the jibe. Both are untroubled enough to be absolutely maddening. “No, she’s no locust of mine.” 

“And what makes you so sure?” She leans to the left, wondering why in the hell she can’t just let this drop. She watches eagerly as the cross-traffic light goes yellow, anxious for her own damned light to go green. “After all, you can’t place her.”

“No, I can’t.” That turns him inward. It bothers him, but not long enough for her to get a read on why. The next second, he’s grinning out the window and giving the old man in the land yacht a wave as they whip around him and speed through the next intersection just as another badly timed light goes yellow. “But I think _Rina_ ”—he drops into an imitation of _her_ imitation that’s so pitch perfect, her ears go red—“Was probably sitting the SATs the last time I had to brave a locust swarm.”

“Had to!” It starts as sarcasm and ends in a laugh. In an end to the tension that’s as mysterious as its beginning.

“Had to.” He laughs, too, though the downward _vee_ his eyebrows make suggests he has no more idea why than she does. “It’s a struggle, Beckett. The life of a millionaire playboy is a constant struggle.” 


	4. Eidolon—Fool Me Once (2 x 04)

> _“It’s the undercover lover con”_  
>  _—Kate Beckett, Fool Me Once (2 x 04)_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

He spends most of the Fletcher case in the unenviable position of envying a dead man. Not just dead, shot in the face with extreme prejudice. Still, he envies him.

It’s defiant at first. It’s chin lifted and chest puffed out, because the world is knocking him around a little bit— _she’s_ knocking him around—just when he feels least equipped to bear it. He’s kind of a wreck about the book. He wasn’t lying all those months ago when he told her that he doesn’t care (much) what people think, but he’s head-to-toe nerves wondering what _she_ thinks. And she’s tormenting him. She won’t even tell him if she’s read the damned thing.

On top of that, she slyly calls him a fraud, and she might be kidding—it might be no rougher than they are with one another any day of the week—but she might be right, too. It might be melodrama on his part, or it might be true that whatever success he’s had up to this point may be no better than a con. So yeah, he’s defiantly envious at first, because Steven Fletcher might have been a fraud, but at least he was pulling it off. Right up to the moment he got shot in the face.

Later, the envy is purely practical. He’s suddenly and utterly without a poker face. He tosses out what’s supposed to be a casual question about Beckett’s “plans,” but it fools Ryan and Esposito not a bit. Beckett herself, bare armed and tantalizingly slick with sweat, gets in a one-two punch. She leans with another taunt about spending quality time with his book. She fixes him with an absolutely knowing look when his voice shoots up an octave to deny that he’s jealous of a mystery date who may or may not even exist. Maybe she’s right about that, too. Maybe it _is_ psychopathy to look one’s nearest and dearest in the face and lie, but right about then, he’d take it.

In the end, though, he envies the dearly departed con man with a kind of yearning that’s as quiet as it is disquieting. Because, for all his many sins, Steven Fletcher makes a believer out of her. She looks Elise Finnegan in the eye and tells her she was no fool at all for believing in the man she loved, and he _covets_ that belief.

Lately, he’s been painfully aware what Beckett thinks of him. What she’s _thought_ of him—that’s what he believes on a good day. But he’s painfully aware of what she’s had every reason to think, given who he was before they met. Given who he’s so painfully been so recently.  That might be what lies beneath the yearning—the immeasurable distance between forgiving, which he thinks she has, and forgetting, which isn’t an act of will. It’s not a matter of belief.

Still, he envies Steven Fletcher for being able to make her believe a man can change.


	5. Veridical—When The Bough Breaks (2 x05)

> _“If you’re stumped, just ask yourself, what would Nikki Heat wear?_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, When the Bough Breaks, (2 x 05)_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

She’s been peering into the depths of her closet long enough for her neck to cramp and her hair to dry weirdly when she finally accepts that she’s beyond stumped, she’s screwed. She has nothing—absolutely _nothing_ —to wear to this godforsaken party, and that’s a fact she has no one but herself to blame for.

It’s not like the damned thing snuck up on her. It’s not like anything Castle related could sneak up on anyone, so she has the printed invitation. She has the daily countdown of reminders he somehow managed to put in her phone and the words _PARTY OF THE CENTURY_ scrawled on tomorrow’s date on her desk calendar. She has accumulated memory of fifty-six thousand mentions he’s made, hints he’s dropped, questions she’s dodged.

No one would believe that it snuck up on her. It’s just that she kind of hadn’t planned on going. Except that’s not true. Or it’s not _strictly_ true, and strict truth seems to be what the gaping maw of a closet that’s utterly devoid of anything remotely “evening cocktail” suddenly demands. 

And the truth is, she’d planned on going under protest.

It’s not something she was aware of, not consciously, but standing there, neck cramp, weirdly dried hair and all, it’s undeniable that she’d counted on someone—the Captain, the Commissioner, maybe even the Mayor— flat out ordering her to go. She’d counted on being able to make a production of hating the idea—of letting all and sundry know that she was only attending under duress, and what is this, the tenth grade?

It all bubbles up to the surface, ridiculous motives, adolescent thinking, and all. She’d like to kick herself, but there’s no time for that. There’s no question that she’s going to the damned party—just like everyone who’s _not_ a tenth grader assumed all along—and she has absolutely nothing to wear.

She shivers in her beat-up terrycloth robe and flicks through the hangers for the fifty-sixth time. The red dress pulls her up short for the fifty-sixth time. She lets the rich fabric slip through her fingers and watches the dim bedroom light play over crystal-studded bodice. The twinge of misery that’s been chasing her catches up. She shoves the dress back inside and slams the door, but not before the closet wrings one more unfortunate truth from her.

He’s going. He would have _been_ going, even without a certain British spy, and that’s what she wants. It’s what she’s been counting down the days to. Except that’s not strictly true. What’s strictly true is complicated. It’s contradictory: The conviction that there’s no way the book would be the end of it and the fear that it most definitely would be. That the _PARTY OF THE CENTURY_ would mark a definite ending that sends a miserable shock through her.

Lying on her bed in a beat-up robe, staring at the ceiling, she’s caught between two stupid truths about why it is that she has absolutely nothing to wear. She’d like to kick herself, but there’s no point. He’s going. She’s going to the damned party and that’ll be the end of that.

She rolls over and reaches for her cell phone. She winces as the awkward angle makes the cramp in her neck flare. She steels herself with a shaking breath and dials.

 _“It’s about time you called.”_ Lanie doesn’t bother to say hello. “ _Do you_ know _how close you’re cutting this? Girl, what is wrong with you?”_

“I don’t know, Lain,” she says.

But it’s not strictly true. 


	6. Proposition—Vampire Weekend (2 x06)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s in a good mood. Positively excellent, really. The day is crisp and cool. It’s sunny with just enough scudding clouds to say it’s fall, and vibrant leaves litter the sidewalks and nestle up to stoops in picturesque piles.

> “You're just going to have to get another beard.”
> 
> —Alexis Castle, _Vampire Weekend (2 x 06)_

* * *

 

He’s in a good mood. Positively excellent, really. The day is crisp and cool. It’s sunny with just enough scudding clouds to say it’s fall, and vibrant leaves litter the sidewalks and nestle up to stoops in picturesque piles.

She’s in an excellent mood, too, or at least a pretty good one. She’s only glared at him once for diverting to crunch leaves, and her heart wasn’t in it. He could tell from the swift look away that usually signals she’s hiding a smile.

It’s a good day. Maybe the first they’ve had since he’s been back, which might be how his mouth catches his brain off guard.

“You wanna have a baby?”

She doesn’t break stride. The swift look away turns right into a swift look at him. She’s remarkably chill about it. He is remarkably _not_ chill. His brain whirs into overdrive. She must be staring into the inky-black depths of his appalled, blank-faced panic, but the narrow-eyed look she’s giving him is quite at odds with the reality that she is going straight-up murder him on a New York City street.

“What, someday?” She shakes her head. It’s a thoughtful _I don’t know,_ rather than the violent, possibly fatal _No_ he’s been expecting _._ In the 1.16 seconds he’s been expecting anything. She looks up and away, studying the clouds as they drift past the sun. “Maybe, I guess?"

“Maybe?” He manages to repeat. It’s a minor miracle, given the state he’s in. His heart batters at his ribs so forcefully that he almost expects to see a _Tex Avery_ outline of it pressing against his shirt buttons. “Someday.”

“I haven’t given it much thought.”

Her shoulders draw in for a moment. She shifts her leather folder from under one arm to the other, and her gaze drops to the sidewalk. In the drawn-out pause that follows, the only thing he hears is the backbeat of his pulse against their perfectly matched footsteps.

“The job, you know?” she says as she lifts her chin. It sounds brisk. It sounds final, but a handful of words slip out in a voice so low he hardly catches it, “. . . and everything.”

_Everything._

Her mother.

The thought hits him hard when he’s already reeling, because _No_ has not once—not _once_ —made an appearance. It pulls the plug on anything he might have managed to say, and he wants to say _something._ So many _something_ s. Like _Approximately how many somedays from now?_ and _How about Cosmo for a boy?_ His brain stutters through all possible _something_ s and his heart hurts for her. Her mother. He hadn’t thought about it, and now he can’t stop.

She does, though. She stops dead. Her hand shoots out to grab him by the arm. The move jerks him around until they’re practically nose to nose.

“Wait.” Her mouth opens and closes a few times. “Have a baby with _you_?”

“Yeah. Yes. Someday.” He has too many _something_ s to add. It’s hard to settle on just one. “I need a new candy beard!” he blurts at last.

She stares right through him. The noise of the city crowds back in around them, car horns and traffic and the scuttle of leaves at their feet. She shakes her head and turns on her heel. She’s on the move so swiftly that the wind has to carry her words back to him.

“Save the horror stories for Halloween, Castle.”

He remembers to breathe. He sets off after her at a trot, smiling hard. It’s not a _No_ , violent or otherwise. It’s a good day. 


	7. Concerted—Famous Last Words (2 x 07)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting Sky Blue into the car is a team effort, one that Sky is in no shape to be part of.

 

> _“No one can help her until she's ready.”_
> 
> _—Kate Beckett, Famous Last Words (2 x 07)_

* * *

Getting Sky Blue into the car is a team effort, one that Sky is in no shape to be part of. 

“What . . .?” He slips an arm around the girl’s thin, shaking frame. He grunts in surprise andalmost goes down as her dead weight shifts unexpectedly.

 _Not dead weight,_ Kate corrects herself.She grits her teeth and slips around the other side to lighten the load. _Not dead._

“Here,” she says out loud. Muscle memory kicks in. She braces one hip against the rear quarter panel of the car and works with the boneless inertia of Sky’s body, rather than against it. “I’ve got her. You get the door.”He opens his mouth to protest. “I’ve _got_ her,” she says again.

He yanks the rear door open and turns back with his arms out, as though he expects the two of them to be a tangle of limbs, falling. His brows pull together and lift apart as he gets it—the fact that she’s got first-hand experience with the peculiar physics of the task at hand. 

He draws a breath. His mouth opens again and she feels her body go stiff. That’s muscle memory, too, shields snicking into place to keep sympathy out. To keep the still-reverberating shame in, but he changes gears on his own. 

He takes a step backward, clear of the wide-open door.“Do I help, or . . .?” 

“Around the other side,” she says, even though a _No_ was on the tip of her tongue. “If you . . .”

She doesn’t have to finish. He’s already sliding across the back seat to catch Sky’s shoulders and lolling head while she works on folding the rest of the girl into the car.

“Good to go,” he says, settling himself within easy reach.

She’s standing there with her head ducked into the car, blinking in surprise to find he’s right. Sky’s as settled as she can be, and none of it was half the struggle she remembers.

“Beckett?” He scans the interior of the car. He looks at Sky, then himself as though he might have missed something.

“Good to go,” she repeats. She shuts the door firmly and jogs around the front of the car to slip behind the wheel.

He’s talking by the time she twists toward them to back out of the warehouse. He keeps talking as she navigates the November-dark streets and weighs the pros and cons of their various emergency room options. It’s low-voiced, soothing nonsense. She hears Alexis’s name and her own. Ryan, Esposito, Lanie. She hears truth and fiction and Sky’s loud, disjointed replies, He talks until suddenly they’re pulling up to the Emergency Room doors.

He stays where he is. He follows her lead, steadying Sky’s limp body from behind as she does the work of swinging the girl’s legs out of the car. He places a gentle hand on the back of her head, keeping it ducked as Kate moves to get a shoulder braced under her arm. 

“We’re gonna stand now, Sky, okay?” she says. 

Sky lets out a cry that makes them both wince, but she finds her feet. She sways heavily and swings around to grab the front of Kate’s coat.

“Lemme, lemme, lemme . . . Lemme ask you something.” Her eyes open wide as she struggles to focus. Castle makes his way around the car just in time to hear her stage whisper. “He _ever_ shut up?”

“No.” Kate offers him a tired smile over her shoulder. He draws himself up in mock indignation, but he’s smiling, too. Exhausted and worried, but smiling.“He really doesn’t.”

 


	8. Future Perfect—Kill the Messenger (2 x 08)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s appealing, the way the past has been pinging around, almost since the beginning of the case. The symmetry intrigues him, from home to the precinct and his mother to Montgomery. Even the disconnect between Caleb Shimansky’s swift, startling end and Brady Thompson’s slow-unfolding tragedy seems like variation on a wildly promising theme.

> “Everything started there.”
> 
> —Kate Beckett, Kill the Messenger (2 x 08)

* * *

 

It’s appealing, the way the past has been pinging around, almost since the beginning of the case. The symmetry intrigues him, from home to the precinct and his mother to Montgomery. Even the disconnect between Caleb Shimansky’sswift, startling end and Brady Thompson’s slow-unfolding tragedy seems like variation on a wildly promising theme.

He’s not exactly sure what he’ll make of it. That doesn’t bother him, though. He goes to the office smart board and links out from the _Nikki_ spine. He spends a fair amount of time letting his mind wander through her Captain’s life. Montrose has barely made an appearance, and the idea of something from his past showing up on Nikki’s doorstep has promise. When that playground loses its appeal, he scrolls over to work on ways Margaret Rook’s frenemies and old flames might cross paths his intrepid detective. He steps back from the board in the wee small hours, sleep-deprived but satisfied at the way dipping in and out of the past gives things texture.

He eavesdrops as she makes the case for mining Montgomery’s old case. He soaks up raw material for dialogue and amplifies the conflict. Nikki pushes, Montrose pushes back. He thrills inwardly as the strands of a major thread come together. He holds tight to that thread to keep his hands occupied with something other than pummeling the bland expanse of Jeff Dilahunt’s smug face. He soaks up the dusty, garish detailsof the Pierson Club and ponders the way time stands still for people like the Wellesleys. He files away idea upon idea about dress codes and matriarchs.

It’s an embarrassment of riches. It’s almost too much to keep up with. And then it ends. With a snappish question from Edwina the Waitress that Was, his gleeful indulgent romp through then and now comes to an end.   
  
_Do you remember what you were doing ten years ago?_

It’s not quite abrupt. He goes inward first. Ten years ago. He thinks of Alexis and her _Powerpuff Girls_ backpack on their way into first grade and a future he wasn’t ready for. He thinks of Meredith exiting the scene, more or less for good. He shuts the door on that. He turns right away from it. He turns to Beckett and only just catches the shock of agony that runs through her.

The barrage of _first_ s is an almost physical thing slamming into his chest. _Birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas. New year, new century, new millennium._ Every single one would have been the first without her mother, and he doesn’t know how she’s so calm. He doesn’t know how she’s been able to stand the way the past has been pinging around this whole time. But she _is_ calm. She can and does stand it, and he doesn’t know what to do with that fact other than stand it with her. So he does. They do.

They bring truth and closure to Olivia Debiasse’s aunt. They wind the thread of a young woman’s too-short life together and they shake the Wellesley family to its rotten core. They do the work, he supposes he _does_ know how she stands it. He supposes she’s been teaching him that all along, but even seeing her with Paisley Shimansky leaves him feeling sore. The modicum of grace that he knows she finds in offering what’s been denied her isn’t enough. 

He doesn’t know what to do with it—soreness and dissatisfaction. It’s his mother, strangely, who points the way. Resplendent in sequins and shaking a tail feather, her ferocity leaves him eager for the next moment and the next.

He works through the night, imagining this time. Casting his his gaze forward and cutting a bold swathe into Nikki’s future. He devises and plots and envisions what can be for her, not what has already been.

Morning comes almost before he’s aware of time passing. It’s one of those rare days when a shower is as sleep or even better. He’s on his way early enough that it’s a completely different crowd at the coffee truck. He’s at the precinct early enough that she jumps a little when he plunks the latte down on her blotter.

“Where do you think we’ll be in ten years?” he asks. He drops into his chair, legs stretched out in front of him.

“We?” Her eyes narrow above the bright white curve of the cup lid.

“You and me.” He meets the glare with an affable grin. “Definitely we, Beckett.” 

 


	9. Easy Mark—Love Me Dead (2 x 09)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a little after eight when they emerge from the restaurant, a cuffed and remarkably recovered Scarlett Price in tow. The two of them watch from beside her unmarked as Ryan and Esposito duck her into the back of their own Crown Vic. Kate raises her hand in answer to Ryan’s wave as they roll toward the precinct. She pops the locks and slides behind the wheel. He falls into the passenger seat. She pulls a U-turn and points the car toward his loft.

> _“Come on, have a heart.”_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Love Me Dead (2 x 09)_
> 
> * * *

It’s a little after eight when they emerge from the restaurant, a cuffed and remarkably recovered Scarlett Price in tow. The two of them watch from beside her unmarked as Ryan and Esposito duck her into the back of their own Crown Vic. Kate raises her hand in answer to Ryan’s wave as they roll toward the precinct. She pops the locks and slides behind the wheel. He falls into the passenger seat. She pulls a U-turn and points the car toward his loft. 

He’s silent at first. She’s promised him a reprieve until morning, a stay of execution of twelve hours or so before the death of a thousand _I-told-you-so_ cuts begins. He doesn’t last ten seconds, though.

“Who’d she get to hit her?” He has his elbow jammed into the arm rest and he’s mumbling into his fist. “No shortage of candidates, I guess.”

He’s not really asking, and she promised, so she holds her tongue.

“Make up.” His head snaps up at that. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him work through the fact that Scarlett’s flawless skin just now bore no trace of the bruises and abrasions that had helped sell her performance back at the hotel. “You’d think that I, of all people, would be able to spot stage make up.” 

He sags back against the seat. He makes it another ten seconds, but he’s disgusted with himself. He can’t help working through every detail he should have picked up.

“I wonder when it started?” She thinks that might actually be a question. She glances toward him, but his face is tipped toward the window. His gaze is fixed on the scenery rolling by. “The broken heel was a nice touch. A little gateway helplessness to test the waters, a chance to feed me the sob story . . . ”

She wants to laugh at that. The gory detail that’s news to her and the fact that he’s mixing his metaphors and beating himself up. She wants to deliver a sly jab about him saving her the trouble, but none of this is as funny as it should be. She pulls around the corner and eases over to the curb quite a bit shy of the door to his building. She buys herself a moment she doesn’t quite know what to do with. 

“I don’t get the kiss.”

For him, it’s an off-hand detail he’s just arrived at. For her, it’s a heart-flipping revelation.

_“Kiss?”_

It’s too loud. Too forceful, but he’s still half trapped in reverie. He gives her a shamefaced glance, then looks away. He fixes his gaze on the dashboard and the details pour out of him.

“She . . . was there on the doorstep. I took her inside.” He winces. She wonders what he’s _not_ saying. What fine points of Scarlett’s con he’s swallowing down. “I cleaned her up, and she . . . Did she think I’d help her get rid of Knox?” She watches his profile as he works his way from anger to shame to shock. “I _did_ help her,” he says flatly. “Knox is dead.”

“Knox is dead,” she repeats, as careful as she can be when she’s still working out what it must be like to be him in this moment—when she’s trying to remember what it was like to feel this particular weight for the first time. “Because of what Scarlett did, not you.”

“But she couldn’t have done it without me.”

It’s jarring how grim the words are. How bitter and how little he sounds like himself. It’s _upsetting_ in some nameless way that makes her slam the locks back on just as he reaches for the door handle.  
  
“She could have, Castle. She _would_ have.” She shakes her head as if the movement might clear away all the things she doesn’t mean to say. “It’s not wrong to trust people.” He snorts at that. He opens his mouth to say who knows what about _I told you so_ s and the sheer hypocrisy of words like that coming out of her mouth, but she rushes on. She beats him to the punch. “It _goes_ wrong sometimes.”

“ _This_ time,” he manages to interject, but it’s more weary than bitter. It’s something.

“This time. Yeah.” She shrugs. She pops open the door locks. “But it doesn’t always.” 

He reaches for the door handle. He pauses, knuckles white. “Not always,” he echoes before he steps out, shoulders hunched into the cutting November wind.

It’s something.


	10. Circuitry—One Man's Treasure (2 x 10)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re friends, they’re good friends, they’re more than friends.

> _"Two relationships. Can you imagine the stress of trying to pull that off?"_
> 
> _—Kate Beckett, One Man's Treasure (2 x 10)_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

She has a relationship with his daughter, who calls to make coffee dates and get advice. Who calls to ask school-project favors that she says yes to immediately. He’s the one who gave Alexis the number, because that’s the protocol: She will always— _always_ —be able to get in touch with him in case of emergencies, big or small.

But his daughter calls when it’s not an emergency, and Beckett answers. She calls back. She meets her on a level that he just _can’t_ for any number of reasons. Because she was a girl once and Alexis is on the verge of being a woman. Because neither of them has a mother, really. The two of them have secrets and arrangements and a _relationship_ completely independent of him _,_ and he never saw that coming.

She has a relationship with his mother, too. With his family, and that’s bigger than the sum of its parts. He hasn’t forgotten that she was the one to call after the body-jacking to let them know he was okay. Even when she was hurt and furious and disgusted with him, she was the one to call when she knew the incident had already made the news and how worried they would be.

And she has a relationship with him. He has a relationship with her.

Sometimes they’re the same relationship. He offers to pull her the perfect twenty-six-second shot and she says yes. She perches on one of the high stools in the break room and listens, enraptured, to the music of the milk steaming. Sometimes she smiles down at the foam flourishes and it’s the same relationship—they’re friends, they’re good friends, they’re more than friends.

Sometimes it’s not the same relationship, the one he has with her and the one she has with him. Sometimes it can’t be, because they’re both in flux, due in no small part to each other. To all the relationships they are and aren’t in.

Sometimes it’s challenging to the point of of baffling and neither of them knows quite what to do except retreat. Sometimes, she is Detective Beckett, Day 1. She’s stoic, cynical, compartmentalized. She doesn’t believe in change or redemption or whirlwind romances.

And sometimes he is Richard Castle, Page 6. He’s just as cynical. He’s utterly shallow. Heprovokes for the sake of provocation and goes for the cheap laugh. He deflects when she turns her well-honed skills on him and absolutely nails what he is and is not, and still he sidesteps. He tap dances around observations and questions and flat-out, on-the-money declarations about who he was, who he is, who he’ll never be.

On the best days, though—in the best moments—it’s a relationship he doesn’t know anything about yet. It’s happening in real time and he’s aching and eager and terrified about what might be around the next corner.

They’re friends. They’re good friends. They’re more than friends.

They’re in a relationship.


	11. Interrogative—The Fifth Bullet (2 x 11)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It must be something about the sunrise exit of Jeremy Preswick, attended, that’s left her inclined to wonder about happy endings. To wonder what qualifies as one for him. It must be something about the sunrise that has her watching Ryan carefully until he’s just out of earshot.

> _“Some men would consider you lucky”_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, The Fifth Bullet (2 x 11)_

* * *

It must be something about the sunrise exit of Jeremy Preswick, attended, that’s left her inclined to wonder about happy endings. To wonder what qualifies as one for him. It must be something about the sunrise that has her watching Ryan carefully until he’s just out of earshot.

“So, you still think he’s lucky?” she asks with her eyes fixed on her paperwork.

“Lucky?” It’s absent-sounding repetition, as if she’s tugged him off some other train of thought, but less than a beat passes before he has hold of the conversational thread. “I think he’s lucky he’s forgotten why she’s his ex,” he says slowly. He twists around in his chair, but the three of them—Jeremy, Emma, and Lucy—are long gone. “Not so lucky he’s forgotten _her._ ”

It’s an answer to the question she asked out loud, not the question beneath the surface she expected him to hear. The question she’s pretty sure he thinks he’s neatly sidestepped. She’d let him most days. She’d roll her eyes and file it away as another cautionary tale about trying to scratch the surface of a man who is, by his own admission, nothing _but_ surface.

But there’s something about the sunrise that makes her persist. “So you’d really want to forget?”

“My whole life? Definitely not.” He makes an all-encompassing gesture and pulls a face. “I mean . . . come on.”

“Just your exes.” She does roll her eyes this time. She staples pages with extreme prejudice and shoves them in file folders. She’s frustrated with herself and annoyed with him. She feels like she’s wasted something. She’s squandered the sunrise and a rare moment of optimism.

He reads her body language. He can hardly help it, and she expects him to go. She’s fed him one hell of an exit line, but he stays put. He shifts in the chair, leaning closer.

“You really want to know?” he fixes her with a quizzical look. He’s surprised by the idea. He’s wary, and that’s . . . disheartening. Of course she really wants to know, and it’s stupid that he doesn’t know that. He goes on before the realization can drag her too far back into herself. “I mean, I couldn’t want to forget Meredith, obviously.”

 _“Obviously.”_ It slips out. It honestly does, and she wants to protest when he snappishly rolls right over her. 

“Because of Alexis.” He softens. “I would never want to forget anything to do with her.”

“Of course not,” she says, and it’s a quiet apology. For being snide about his kid’s mother. For the fact that he’s surprised she wants to know this. She thinks about Hallowe’en and the story he fed her. She’d written it off as his problem—his total inability to look inward and his constant need to _perform_ , but maybe she’s a too-willing audience. “But would you . . .”

She trails off. She’s embarrassed and abruptly exhausted. She shakes her head. He doesn’t see, though. He’s studying his own hands, the arm of the chair, the scuffed tile between his feet. 

“Gina,” he says after a long moment. “That . . . seems more tempting?” His gaze rises with the inflection. He seems to be asking her, and she feels curiously put on the spot.

“Because it hurts more?” she offers.

He frowns up at the ceiling, considering it. He shakes his head, then nods, then shakes it again.“It hurts more recently.” That comes with another frown. Another head shake. “It’s fresher. And forgetting would be . . . simpler than with Meredith. More straightforward.”

“Even though she’s your publisher?”

It’s another slip. She meant to listen, not open her mouth, but it slips out, too, and she can’t remember if she’s supposed to know that or not. If it’s something they’ve talked about or she has a plausible professional reason to know. Either way, he doesn’t latch on to it. He doesn’t flip the script on her. 

“There are other publishers,” he says, with a dismissive wave. It’s confidence. It’s not played-up arrogance like it usually would be. Like it could be if he wanted an out here. “Honestly, though?” He steals a glance at her. He’s still wary. He’s still not sure the whole conversation isn’t some kind of set up. “No, I wouldn’t want to forget. Who knows who I’d be, or what mistakes I’d make all over again if I did?”

“Who knows?” she repeats.

It’s more than an echo. It’s the kind of existential question that comes with sunrise and the long, long night before it. But they set it aside for now. He hauls himself out of the chair, stretching, yawning, _performing_ , but it’s ok—it’s a good ending to this unexpected moment of honesty. They say _goodnight, good morning, until later, Detective_. She watches him go, and she wonders: Who knows?


	12. Tempus Sanat—A Rose for Everafter (2 x 12)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wasn’t in the market for closure on Kyra Blaine. He’s had fifteen years to imagine what closure might have looked like: Blissful reunion, bitter confrontation, callous rejection, calculated indifference and so on and so on and so on.

> _“Just imagine, if things had worked out.”_
> 
> _—Kate Beckett, A Rose for Everafter (2 x 12)_

* * *

He wasn’t in the market for closure on Kyra Blaine. He’s had fifteen years to imagine what closure might have looked like: Blissful reunion, bitter confrontation, callous rejection, calculated indifference and so on and so on and so on.

But the truth is—the truth he’s opening his eyes to in real time—is the idea of closure scares him. One door slams inside him. It leaves him cold and clinical and above it all. He relishes the absurd details and drinks them in. He moves them around on the chessboard of possible scenes that’s always set inside his mind, andhe thinks how he’ll move these particular pieces around. It’s detached. He’s just one of them. Kyra is just one of them, and this is how it could be if he’d let it. He could be over her, here and now. He might already be over her.

The thought doesn’t just scare him, it makes him angry and erratic. He goes looking for her, literally and figuratively. He finds her peeping out from behind Schrödinger’s wedding cake, and for a moment, everything is raw and immediate. It’s a relief the way that emotion presses in on the two of them from all sides. She knows he’s done this twice. She’s talking about signs from the universe and chiding him gently for taking her at her word all those years ago and not chasing her to London. It’s a relief that it hurts—that she makes him angry and she makes him ache and he’ll never be over her.

But he finds he has to chase that feeling. He has to work to sustain the tumult of emotion. He picksat the scabs and prods his own wounds. He goes fiercely after Greg. He lashes out at Beckett, at his mother for suggesting that he could _possibly_ be too close to the woman who has defined so much of his life. He _wallows,_ and he knows he’s wallowing. He knows that he’s cultivating all of this with the scent of the leather-bound notebook and the feel of the faded photograph in his hand, with its sharp, old-fashioned corners. 

It surges up, unaided for a moment when he sees her again. He gives chase and the sight of her by the light of the city at night genuinely takes his breath away. She steps into his arms, looking for comfort. He kisses her, and there’s no denying that he’s dizzy with it. For one staggering moment, he’s filled to bursting with longing for her. For what was.

It’s a lightning strike, though. It sizzles through him. It burns away lingering, long-neglected odds and ends. He steps back and even the vital, vibrant emotion of a minute ago is sepia toned. It’s nostalgia and it’s terrifying. He doesn’t know what he has without the longing it turns out he’s been sheltering for nearly twenty years.

He doesn’t know who he is or what will drive him, or how he’ll ever write again. That’s more drawn out. The melodramatic teenage fit—and he knows that’s what it is, even in real time—rages on through the end of the case. Through the stilted lines he and Kyra exchange and her chaste kiss on his cheek. The crisis of closure stretches out as he dangles the cheap plastic camera between his fingers.

Beckett’s tap on the door frame startles him. It jettisons him from past to present and he resents it for an instant. He resents _her_ for standing there like an answer to every question he’s hardly had time to ask.

“You all right?” She’s gruff about it. It’s a little bit studied.

 _Cultivated_ he thinks to himself, but he answers in kind. “No.”

“You gonna be?” She crosses her arms and leans a shoulder against the jamb.

“No.” He lets the video camera clatter to the table and shoves it away.

“What, never?” She has to work at the scowl.

“Never ever.” He has to work at it, too. The jut of his chin and the sullen slump of his shoulders.

“Never _ever,_ ” she repeats. She nods like she’s thinking it through. “Long time.”

“The longest,” he says.

He heaves a sigh that has her biting her lip. She looks away. She tugs the corners of her mouth downward. “You’ll probably need a drink.”

“Or two.” He gathers himself up. He strikes a wounded pose that makes her laugh outright. It makes _him_ laugh outright, though it’s a little shaky. It’s a little terrifying the way he feels himself floating free and clear of a past that’s anchored him for so long.

“One,” she tells him as she shrugs into her jacket.

“One?” He tosses one end of his scarf melodramatically over his shoulder.“That’s supposed to last me never ever?”

“Guess it’ll have to.” She punches the elevator down button. The doors ding open half a second later. “One is all you get.”

“Nope.” He holds out an arm. He ushers her through with a sweeping gesture that makes her roll her eyes. “I refuse to accept that.”

 


	13. Proximate—Sucker Punch (2 x 13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What took you so long? 
> 
> It’s the first thing to occur to her when his face appears left of her shoulder in the mirror over the locker room sink.

> _“I overstepped.”_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Sucker Punch (2 x 13)_

* * *

_What took you so long?_

It’s the first thing to occur to her when his face appears left of her shoulder in the mirror over the locker room sink. She doesn’t say it out loud. She’s surprised to find she can’t. Her throat is thick and what little breath she can pull in seems to stall at the top of her lungs where it’s no good to her.

“Kate.”

There’s a lot packed into the single syllable. A lot going on with him as his eyes meet hers in reflection. He doesn’t move. Not to come any nearer anyway. She sees his jaw working and his shoulders rising, falling, twisting as if he’s reaching for her. But he stays in place, a fixed point over her shoulder.

She’s the one to move. She recedes for no particular reason. Her face grows smaller in the mirror. Her hands come into view. They’re nightmarish, fluttering things, pale and mottled with something dark. They don’t seem to have anything to do with her. Nothing seems to have anything to do with her, though what comes into view around her as she pulls back is a dramatic scene.

There’s blood everywhere. It streaks the white porcelain of the sink and stains the wads of cheap brown paper towel piled in sopping heaps all around. The basin is overflowing. She hears the roar of it now, as though her splintered attention needed the visual cue. She hears the echo of water slapping angrily against the tile. Her gaze drops to follow rust-tinged rivulets as they wind down the spindly chrome legs to meet the tide creeping steadily toward her across the tile.

“Kate, you’re soaked.” There’s a pleading note in his voice that drags her gaze back up to the mirror. She’s smaller and smaller in it. She’s still receding. “You have to be cold.”

It seems to come true as he says it. A shiver wracks her body. She looks down at herself and finds she’s soaked from above the waist to below the knee. The puddle laps at her toes now, driving her back until her body connects with his. The hunched expanse between her shoulder blades meets the wall of his chest.

His fingers close around her arms above each elbow. He steps back, opening distance between them. It’s a steadying gesture, the simplest means of of absorbing her erratic motion. It hangs in the balance like that for who knows how long. It hangs in the balance until their eyes meet again in the mirror. There’s a streak of blood darkening her forehead and a matching one across his knuckles.

His hands slide to her shoulders, bringing their bodies close. He his head bows beside hers. His eyes fall closed. She watches his shoulders rise and fall. The motion sets a cadence for her own breath, all the way in, all the way out.

 _Objects in mirror are closer than they appear_.

It’s the second thing to occur to her.

 

 


	14. Fractious—The Third Man (2 x 14)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are not walking me home, Castle.”

 

> _“Maybe he does it for the thrill?”_
> 
> _—Kevin Ryan, The Third Man (2 x 14)_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

“You are _not_ walking me home, Castle.”

Beckett rounds on him as he spills out of Remy’s revolving door into a late January wind that’s not screwing around. By his count, this marks the sixteenth argument they’ve gotten into since they left the precinct arm in arm.

He’s winning, of course. He’s already demolished her ludicrous pro–strawberry milkshake position and made her admit that shoestring-thin _frites_ are wonderful alongside a medium–rare brasserie steak, but they have no place in the diners of a well-ordered society. He’s had to throw one or two bouts her way in the interests of surviving the night. He’s had to pretend to reach a détente on permissible pizza toppings, and out of respect for the patrons of an establishment he foresees them frequenting from now on, he’d had to let the stale-versus-fresh marshmallow peep debate go entirely. But he’s winning big, even if he doesn’t count the masterful way he’d preemptively covered the bill, complete with generous tip, before they’d even slid into the booth.

He totally counts it, though. A win is a win, and it’s ninety-nine percent of the reason she’s so delightfully cranky right now. It’s ninety-nine percent of the reason she’s just decided to pick argument number sixteen, which just so happens that takes them right over the top into personal best territory.

“Of course I’m not walking you home,” he says agreeably. “Far too cold.” He turns away to hide his grin as she tries to will herself to stop shivering in the jacket that must’ve been languishing in her locker since the mild autumn nights that are long behind them now. “I’ll get us a cab.” 

“Get yourself a cab,” she snaps.

She makes a grab for the garment bag exactly one second after he casually shifts it to his other hand. He lifts it high and considers the wisdom—or lack thereof—in taunting her about having changed out of the platform pumps that would have erased the height advantage he’s currently enjoying, but thinks better of it. She _is_ armed, after all, and he’d like to continue to enjoy his height advantage and the integrity of his kneecaps.  

“We’re going the same way, Beckett.” He holds the hanger end of the bag out to her like a peace offering. “We have a responsibility to share a cab.”

“A responsibility?” She snatches the silver loop from his fingers. She turns her back on him and fusses with the zipper as though he’s been rooting around inside. It’s a transparent bit of stage business meant to hide the twitch of a smile that’s totally at odds with the acid tone she’s going for. 

“To Mother Earth, Beckett.” A cab rolls to the curb with timing more perfect than he could have orchestrated. He sweeps the door open with a courtly bow.

Her eyes narrow. Her jaw twitches, but a gust of wind whips up and does its damnedest to rip the garment bag out of her hand.She shakes her head and slides across the seat.

“Wouldn’t the subway be kinder to Mother Earth?” she grumbles out the street side window.

“Actually,” he says as he settles in beside her, “there’s an argument to be made—“

“No.” She cuts him off. She jabs a threatening finger in his general direction. “There is no argument to be made.” 

“Ok. No argument,” he agrees. The swift concession draws a narrow-eyed glare from her. She’s suspicious of it, and well she might be. There’s still the matter of walking her to the door.


	15. Antecedent—Suicide Squeeze (2 x 15)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels like an ass as soon as she says it. 
> 
> Castle is famously fatherless

> _“You're thinking . . . You don't care and you want me to stop talking.”_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Suicide Squeeze (2 x 15)_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

She feels like an ass as soon as she says it.

_Castle is famously fatherless_

She's not even sure _why_ she says it, especially like that. Like she thinks its some part of his persona or something . . . invented for his adoring public.

But she doesn’t think that. In fact, she _knows_ it’s not the case. She’s sure of it in the exact moment that the snide declaration makes its way out of her mouth. She knows, and she feels like an ass.

It’s kind of pointless, though. He hardly seems to register it—the comment or the tone—and the one-sided regret feels strange. It feels like something pointless to expend energy on, so she pushes it away.

But the subject keeps coming up. Family and fathers and memory keep surfacing, and she goes back and forth on whether he cares or not. On whether it’s worth feeling like an ass or not.

There’s the fact that he pushes back at Esposito a little harder than he usually would. But, Esposito is definitely being an ass, so there’s that. And then there’s the color that burns the tips of his ears and the almost bashful way he ducks his head when the Captain says there must be a little cop somewhere in his family. 

It makes her think maybe it’s something matters to him far more than he’d ever admit, and she spends almost the entire case working her way up to an apology. She doesn’t know what that would sound like, though. She doesn’t see how the scene would go, and she mostly keeps her mouth shut. 

But the case comes together and she sees it clearly. He leans forward, eager to hear the story of Cano Vega only just learning he might have a daughter. The story of a father learning the truth and taking swift, heroic action: Revelation, redemption, reunion, however tragically brief. She sees the narrative arc and the way it moves him.

She’s not sure she would have thought to bring Maggie Vega and Lara together without that. Without the sorrow beyond sympathy she hears in his voice as he contemplates the young woman facing the world so entirely alone. But she does think of it, and the satisfied smile they share as the two women embrace feels like a start on the apology she’s sure now she ought to make.

It’s a start but not enough, as it turns out. They’re in her car in front of Vega’s oversized eyesore of a mansion. She’s already switched on the ignition and put the car in gear, but she reverses course. She decides it’s not enough.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts.

“Sorry?” He looks around, utterly perplexed. 

“The stupid crack I made back at the ball field.” She grips the wheel to keep herself from writhing. “About you being fatherless.”

There’s an instant of blank surprise. An instant, but he composes himself. “I mean . . . I am. So . . . .”

He shrugs. It’s pointedly nonchalant, and she feels stupid. She feels like she should’ve just kept her mouth shut, but she’s already in this.

“So,” she says. “I didn’t have to be ass about it.”

“I didn’t think you were.” That’s _not_ nonchalant. It’s careful, like he’s worried about being an ass to _her._ “Honestly, it doesn’t bother me.”

She doesn’t know which he means: Not having a father or her being an ass about it. She doesn’t know how to ask. She makes a noncommittal sound and switches the ignition back on. 

“It bothers Alexis,” he says just as she’s about to put the car back in gear. “She has this school project and out of nowhere . . . ” He trails off. His gaze is fixed on house, like he’s picturing the scene inside. The family that might yet be. “Out of nowhere, she’s worried about what _I_ didn’t have, and it bothers her.” He flicks a sidelong glance at her. Color burns the tips of his ears and he heaves in a breath that looks more than a little painful. “So I guess it bothers me.”

“Yeah.” She says quietly. She makes space for him to talk about it if he wants to. “I can see how it would.”


	16. Indeterminate—The Mistress Always Spanks Twice (2 x 16)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no boyfriend.

> _“You're grasping at straws, and that can't make you happy.”_
> 
> _—Lady Irena, The Mistress Always Spanks Twice (2 x 16)_

* * *

 

There is no boyfriend. The boyfriend is purely hypothetical, and it should be obvious to anyone who listens to her—anyone who literally pays attention to Kate Beckett for a living—that there was an implied _If I had one_ embedded in her scolding _._ He’s sure of that. He’s pretty sure, and when his faith in the hypothetical nature of the boyfriend she doesn’t actually have wavers, he takes a page from her book. Or his book, but it’s based on her. It’s the outcome of a full year of professional watching. Anyway, he feeds the timeline. 

It’s been, like, a _minute_ since Brad, and he knows for a fact that was a fiasco even before the two of them abandoned their dates for a good, old-fashioned pet store shootout. He smiles to himself thinking about her gesturing with the long silver ice cream spoon as she _and-another-thing_ shared the gory Fiasco Brad details in between bites of an almost frighteningly large milkshake.

So the hypothetical boyfriend is definitely not Brad, and if the boyfriend weren’t hypothetical, _ipso facto_ there would have been no Brad. But given that Fiasco Brad most definitely existed, there’s no way she could have met someone else since then.

Except of course she could have met someone. She’s arrestingly beautiful. She’s wickedly smart and funny. She’s magnetic. She could meet someone any second of any day, but she can’t have met someone she’d use the _B_ word for already. She probably can’t have.

The past modal perfect of it all is maddening. It’s professionally demoralizing, because he’s supposed to be good at this. He should know when, if ever, she’d start using the _B_ word about someone she was seeing, and he should know what that entails. He should be able to say with absolute confidence that there would have been no Brad if there was also a boyfriend, but he doesn’t.

He knows about Sorenson. He knows that she talks about six months like it’s an eternity, and that’s frankly kind of weird. He knows that Lanie had a hand in Fiasco Brad, and that tells him thathowever many people she _could_ meet any second of any day, she doesn’t, in general.

And that, more or less, exhausts what he knows about her and boyfriends or even . . . boyfriend-adjacent individuals.

It’s not a lot. For all he knows, she could be a free love–espousing, bondage-cuff recognizing, normal-looking really freaky person with a Pleasure PhD in slippery _and_ sticky.

That’s an entirely different Fail-with-a-capital- _F_ on his part, because she’s straight-up taunting him with her off-hand commentary on leatherwork and public play. She’s daring him to follow that line of inquiry and discover whether her dirty little secrets on that score are personal or professional, and he wants to. He definitely wants to confirm some long-standing suspicions about what lies beneath her straight-laced exterior.

That’s what should be driving him right now. He’s already decided that Lady Irena’s House of Pain will be coming to a Nikki Heat novel near you in the very near future, and he needs to know exactly how easy it will be for Nikki to step into that world. More accurately, he needs to know how many miles her thigh-high patent leather boots may have already walked in it. 

 _That_ should be his primary mission. He should be spending his time and energyseparating the tease from the truth, but he isn’t.

He wants to know—he wants to _believe_ —that the boyfriend is hypothetical.


	17. Steadfast—Tick, Tick, Tick . . . (2 x 17)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a mostly sleepless night for her. That’s not really a surprise. There’s a maniac roaming the city whose third kill just earned him his serial killer badge.

 

> _I’m_ not _leaving you alone_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Tick, Tick, Tick . . .(2 x 17)_

* * *

It’s a mostly sleepless night for her. That’s not really a surprise. There’s a maniac roaming the city whose third kill just earned him his serial killer badge. He’s running the table on them, and whatever Jordan Shaw says—whatever stupid joke Castle cracks to make her smile—she knows that’s on her. She knows she’s responsible for the lives lost and the families that will never be the same. 

It’s not really the killer that keeps her tossing and turning, though. There’s some vigilance about the case, of course. She’s even more attentive than usual to her phone resting on the night table. Her eyes fly open at phantom buzzes and she thumbs the screen on to be sure she hasn’t missed anything. She’s a little bit paranoid about Shaw making executive decisions about whether or not she can be any good to the investigation—whether she’s too burned out or doesn’t have enough people or whatever. 

But Jordan Shaw and the hundred sly digs she’s gotten in over the last fifteen hours aren’t really what keeps sleep at bay either, at least not entirely. She lies awake from minute to minute, hour to hour, listening for the door.

Not the bedroom door, though. Despite her parting shot to him, there’s really no part of her that thinks he showed up tonight, wine in hand, to storm the gates. But that leaves _all_ the parts of her with no grasp at all on why he _did_ show up. Why he hasn’t gotten bored or so uncomfortable on a couch that’s not nearly long enough to accommodate his height that he slips out the front door.

 _He’s_ what’s keeping her up, and it’s not the fact that he showed up. It’s not the fact that he still seems to be here as morning creeps closer. It’s the fact that Jordan Shaw wants an explanation for him—for _them_ —and she doesn’t have one.

_Why do you keep him around?_

The reflex to push back against the question itself is strong. She’s not keeping him around, he just won’t go away. It’s the mayor, it’s the commissioner, it’s Montgomery, it’s _him_ , not her, and certainly not them.

But she’s been listening for the door all night. She’s been ridiculous and jealous about his infatuation with Jordan Shaw and her toys and her federal fast pass. She’s been completely upended by the possibility that she _can’t_ keep him around—that the nameless force that’s kept them in this inexplicable, inescapable synchronous orbit for a year of her life might suddenly vanish and set her adrift.

That’s the heart of her sleepless night. It’s the engine driving her pounding pulse when she finally climbs out of bed, and her hand reaches for the doorknob, then shrinks back. It’s the ludicrous butterflies in her stomach as she forces all evidence of scent and sound from her mind until she rounds the corner and sees him there—still there—at the stove.

“You’re still here.”       


	18. Discovery—Boom! (2 x 18)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s written the near-death experience to death.

> _“It’s not always that neat. You just keep adding pieces of the puzzle until a picture emerges.”_
> 
> _—Jordan Shaw, Boom! (2 x 18)_

* * *

****He’s written the near-death experience to death. It’s more or less mandatory for what he does: Action, adventure, mystery—they all demand it. So he’s written it for plot purposes: To spark the reluctant hero to action, to raise the stakes of the mission, to reveal the previously hidden villain, to generally keep the reader turning the page.

He’s written it to illuminate his characters, to grow them beyond two dimensions. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned brush with death to peel back what seems to be and reveal what really _is,_ deep down. Cowardice, heroism, selflessness, fatalism—they’re all thrown intosharp relief when the character, the reader, the other inhabitants of the worlds he creates have to face mortality.

And of course he’s written it to move relationships along. True to the well-worn formula established by a certain British spy, the conviction that the lights are about to go out for the very last time is always a potent aphrodisiac. It’s an efficient delivery system for what the reader wanted in the first place—resolution of sexual tension—without too much protracted back and forth before the payoff.

But it’s fiction. He knows that. Or he thought he knew that. He’s been held at gunpoint by one idiot and a couple of psychopaths. He’s been in the middle of a body-jacking and more than one shootout—hell, he’s been bitten by a vampire—and all of it’s been exhilarating and terrifying. He’s held his own and he’s screwed up in the heat of the moment. He’s had his mettle tested, but personal epiphanies—and, sadly, life-affirming sex—have been in short supply, because the transformative, hot sex–generating power of the near-death experience is _fiction._

Except he watched her die. He got there too late, and for however many minutes, every one too terrible to count, he believed that he had just watched her die. Andfor every second of those too-terrible minutes, he was awash in epiphany, revelation, discovery. For every _second_ he believed, he saw everything with terrible clarity.

He saw his trivial, empty life and what it had been before her. 

He saw the bare, contracted confines of hers before him.

He saw what they had become together and what they’d come to mean to each other. He saw what they ought to have been and what he fervently wanted them to be. 

But he hadn’t watched her die. He’d run headlong into the inferno and found her rising from the flames, and he is utterly transformed. He is painfully aware now of things that have been burbling beneath the surface. He’s enjoyed the pleasant, sizzling ambiguity between them, and he knows she has, too.

He thought—he believed—that he had watched her die. And now he’s watching her live. He’s watching her glide and scurry from place to place in his kitchen. He’s watching her pivot and reach up on her toes for plates and cups and disappear below counter level only to pop up seconds later, wielding a pan and a pot lid like a sword and shield. He’s watching her blush and laugh at whatever outrageous thing his mother has just said. He’s watching her live, and he will never be the same.

She spots him then, across the sun-toasted expanse of the loft. She blushes and lights up. Shelifts her chin expectantly and her shoulders curve inward in a shy, self-protecting gesture. She spots him and he goes to her.

“Mm. I just woke up and literally smelled the coffee.” 


	19. Under the Radar—Wrapped Up in Death (2 x 19)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has to be a record. He’s been silent—record-breakingly silent, as a quick glance at the dashboard clock confirms—the whole way to the airport.

> _“A romantic—someone who wouldn’t be satisfied with a casual relationship.”_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Wrapped Up in Death (2 x19)_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

 

It has to be a record. He’s been silent—record-breakingly silent, as a quick glance at the dashboard clock confirms—the whole way to the airport. She expects the spell to break when the looming presence of Chacaw Te in the back seat is no longer a factor, but their Maya frenemy is on his way back to Mexico. They’ve even fought their way out of the rage-fueled cacophony of the departure level at JFK, and he still hasn’t said a word.

“You ok?” She finally asks. They’re clear of the random knots of congestion that ring the airport and the silence is starting to freak her out a little.

“Ok?” He blinks at her. It takes him a second to come back to himself from wherever he’s been this whole time. “Yeah, fine. Of course.” 

She shrugs. He doesn’t sound fine, exactly. He doesn’t sound _not_ fine, either, so she tells herself to enjoy the unexpected respite from narration of his every waking thought.

She tells herself, and apparently doesn’t listen. “You’re just quiet.”

“Just unraveling the case.” It’s his turn to shrug.  

“What’s there to unravel?” She shoots him a glance, trying to gauge what she’s setting herself up for.  “Crime of passion, crime to cover up a crime. Pretty standard.” 

“Still lots of threads to pull, though.” He flexes his fingers as though they’re itching for a keyboard. “What was always going to happen, what might not have happened if the characters made different decisions.” 

“Like what?” It’s an innocent enough question. It would be idle conversation with anyone else, but innocent isn’t usually how it goes with them. 

“Like . . . “ He turns to peer out the passenger side window as if the thread he wants might be dangling right there in the darkness broken up by occasional streetlights. “Like what if Will and Rachel hadn’t been hiding their relationship?”

“What difference would that have made?” she scoffs. “Raynes still would’ve killed Nicole for having the gall not to be interested him, Will still would’ve found out, Raynes still would’ve had to kill him.”

“I guess. And Rachel said they weren’t even together _together_ until they got back from the dig . . .” He mulls it over. He nods, but there’s a frown not too far beneath the surface. “Still.”

“ _Still,_ ” she mimics. “Still what?”

“Still, it might’ve been nice for them to be ‘out’,” he shrugs again.

“Some people like their privacy.” She shakes her head. “Not everybody wants to be ‘out’ about every relationship they’re in.”

“Not _every_ relationship,” he agrees. “But they were serious.”

“Serious?” It comes out more forcefully than she’d like. She’s on the defensive for no particular reason. “What makes you think they were serious?”

“Sexy pictures, candlelit baths,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “and, of course: High heels under the bed.”

“You’ve got me there, Castle.” She laughs in spite of herself at the over-the-top sultry tone, the eyebrow waggle. “Heels under the bed are serious.”

“Incontrovertibly serious,” he says.

His tone is smug enough to raise her hackles all over again. Her spine stiffens as the pieces click into place. She swears under her breath.

She coasts to the curb outside his building. She yanks the gearshift into park and her eyes fall closed. “I left a pair of heels under the guest bed, didn’t I?”

“You’re welcome to come up and grab them.” He’s the picture of innocence. She does a quick cost-benefit analysis on murdering him right here on his own doorstep. “I’d bring them by the precinct, but not everybody wants to be ‘out’.”


	20. Second Intention—The Late Shaft (2 x 20)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie Monroe is a number in a series, though he couldn’t say what that number is. He’s never been into that kind of accounting, but the way she comes into his orbit, the frantic pace of it, the way she exits the scene—it’s all familiar, and he’s not lying when he brushes a no-harm-no-foul kiss over her cheek and tells her he’s never had so much fun being used. He might be exaggerating a little, but he’s not lying, exactly.

> _“Is this some kind of a weird come-on?”_
> 
> _—Kate Beckett, The Late Shaft (2 x 20)_

* * *

Ellie Monroe is a number in a series, though he couldn’t say what that number is. He’s never been into that kind of accounting, but the way she comes into his orbit, the frantic pace of it, the way she exits the scene—it’s all familiar, and he’s not lying when he brushes a _no-harm-no-foul_ kiss over her cheek and tells her he’s never had so much fun being used. He might be _exaggerating_ a little, but he’s not lying, exactly.

It _was_ fun. There’s nothing _not_ fun about a beautiful woman being so flatteringly attentive, and if it started out mercenary on her part, he doesn’t think it’s delusion on his to say that it wasn’t _just_ that by the end. He thinks she had fun, too, and it's far from the first time he’s been a number in someone else’s series. 

But he feels weird about it all in retrospect. He feels several kinds of weird.

He’s relieved when it’s over, for one thing. At first, he thinks that's just the vagaries of timing: Ellie Monroe is a number in a series, but the setting and the sheer, whirlwind intensity of the few days they spent together wouldn't have—couldn't have—played out that way if Alexis hadn’t been off on her trip.

So, at first it seems obvious that he’d be relieved when Ellie exits the scene at the exact moment his daughter re-enters, because he misses his kid fiercely every time she leaves. Because there’s a grim part of him that’s counting down the days until she’s off to college, off to all the places she'll go, off to a life that only intersects with his occasionally, and the Ellie Monroes of the world will never be able to compete with his desire to hold on tight to every minute they have left. 

It’s not that, though. It’s not _just_ that he’s relieved to have the status quo restored at home. It's not even that he’s glad the days of Beckett looking him up and down like he’s a walking crime scene are over, though that’s part of it, too. He’s glad he’s done having to take the space of the elevator ride up to the fourth floor arranging himself—face and body and mind—before he settles into his familiar place beside her desk.

He’s glad, but he’s not glad, and that’s another layer of weird—at least one. Because he . . . misses it a little, too? That first morning after, he misses the moment of nervous confusion as he tries to decide whether he wants her to know or he doesn’t want her to know—whether it’s agonizing or exciting or just professionally interesting to stumble his way through those moments while she swings wildly from low-key contempt to pretty blatant jealousy. 

That might be it—the heart of weirdness—because she is, she was, she has been jealous. It’s news to him. It’s a revelation that it's not just a scene they occasionally play, where she taunts him and he taunts her and they both know it's nothing more than variation on a theme they’ve been perfecting for a year and change: _Feint, lunge, riposte._ It’s not that. She’s _genuinely_ jealous.

He should enjoy that. He should feel smug and vindicated on the surface, elated in his heart of hearts, and he does feel that way. He feels all those ways, but he also feels weird about it.

He feels weird about the fact that he was using Ellie, too, even if he didn't realize it until after the fact. Even if he didn’t mean to and even if she wouldn’t have cared, because she knows how it goes when you're a number in a series.

He feels weird that she—Kate—isn’t just jealous, she’s disappointed. _In_ him and _for_ him, she’s disappointed, and he’d like to rail against that. He’d like to tell her that there's nothing wrong with the Ellie Monroes and Rick Castles of the world doing what they do, so long as everyone understands the rules of engagement. He’d like to tell her that he’s never had so much fun being used. He’d like to tell her that the ink is barely dry on his second divorce, and he’s not in the market for anything more than that.

He plays out the scene in his mind. He manufactures situations where the two of them actually talk about stuff like this—intimate, personal stuff—right out loud instead of dancing on the edge of everything. _Feint, lunge, riposte._ He writes stage directions and dialogue, sharp as a blade, but every devastating exit line he comes up with falls flat. Every single one sounds like a lie, because it is.

He's in the market for more. 

 


	21. Atomic—Den of Thieves (2 x 21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s thinking a lot about sex lately. In the abstract.

 

> “You’ve worked with Castle for a year, and not a damn thing has happened, so . . .”
> 
> —Lanie Parish, _Den of Thieves_ (2 x 21)
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

She’s thinking a lot about sex lately. In the abstract. Definitely in the abstract, although Detective Tom Demming could be a game changer on that front. There’s no doubt that sparring match could be a preview of things to come if she’d like it to be, and why not? It’s been a while—a _long_ while. But Demming isn’t really the answer. He's not the root cause of her recent preoccupation.

She’s not sure there _is_ a root cause, or just one anyway. It’s just . . . in the air, or in the water or something, and everyone is suddenly talking about it. Everyone is suddenly having it, if everyone is the population consisting of Richard Castle. Everyone kind of is.

He is—or was, anyway—having it, and he doesn’t even care that the Ellie Direct-From-Central-Casting Monroe was literally shopping herself around. It’s not that _she_ cares. It’s not that his utterly predictable Page 6 antics really have anything to do with her. It’s just that she’s thinking about it a lot lately. Sex in general, not whether or not he's having it. Mostly not about that. Although . . .

It goes back to Dunn, she decides. It goes back to Jordan Fucking Shaw and her “hardly ever wrong” profiling. It goes back to him, full of surprises, backing her sharp denial when she fully expected suggestive silence and a Cheshire Cat grin.

 _We’re_ not _sleeping together._

_This is the most sexless relationship I've ever been in._

It goes back to the upending truth of that particular turn of phrase, rife with _absence_ and _almost._ It's so easy to imagine any number of moments going another way. Him at her door with a bottle of wine, stubbornly refusing to go. Her in his kitchen in the middle of the night, hunched over the sink, wracked with sobs over every stupid thing she’d lost. It goes back to her lying sleepless on one bed, then another, wondering if the balance was finally about to tip. Wondering how she should, would, did feel about that.

But those are just moments, and it goes back further than that. It goes back to the howling, helpless, black-hole rage that came with washing Dick Coonan’s blood from her hands and the absolute fact that she thought about what it would be like to divert that rage into more dangerous channels. It's about the panic that pinged around her head, her chest, her entire body, head to toe, at seeing the words in literal black and white— _romantically linked—_ and the bookend echoes around that. _People he really cares for—He cares about you_.

She’s thinking a lot about sex lately. How she is not having it with him and he is not having it with her. Her defenses have held. She hasn’t done something she knew from the beginning would be so obviously stupid, but there’s no blue ribbon for that. Sex is the least of it. And she’s done so many stupid things.


	22. Profession—Food to Die For (2 x22)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's not sure it’s a decent hour when he picks up the phone and dials Madison’s number.

> _“Why couldn't you just be honest?”_
> 
> _—Madison Queller, Food to Die For (2 x22)_

* * *

He's not sure it’s a decent hour when he picks up the phone and dials Madison’s number. It rings, and he realizes he has no idea what constitutes a decent hour for a restaurateur. He suspects it’s late nights and sweet oblivion snatched from the clutches of single-digit A.M. hours. He suspects it’s a rhythm he was absolutely familiar with—one that still collides with the fact that there’s no such thing as a decent hour for a homicide detective—until a little more than a year ago. That would make this a very definitely notdecent hour, but it’s too late to reconsider. It’s already ringing. It’s _still_ ringing.

He's on the verge of hanging up—of trying again, smack dab in the middle of the day when the whole grown-up world must be awake, however grudgingly—when Madison’s bright voice comes down the line, “ _Good Morning, this is Madison._ ” 

“Madison!” he says, just as brightly. It takes a little bit of a push. He feels like he's been caught a little flat footed, even though he’s the one who called. “It's Castle. I mean . . . it’s Rick.”

 _“Rick.”_ She sounds surprised, and not necessarily in the _what a pleasant_ sense. Not necessarily _not_ in that sense, either, but there’s a pause that goes on long enough to curl itself into a question mark. He’s on the verge of stupidly—absolutely stupidly— adding _from last night?_ with an audible question mark of his own when she finally speaks again. _“Rick. Hi.”_ She sounds a little embarrassed. _“Good morning.”_

“I’m calling because I need your etiquette expertise,” he says, pouring on the charm. A little too much charm. He winces, but it seems like there's no going back, so he pushes through. “Do the _I'm so sorry our date was ruined by a murder investigation_ flowers go to the lady’s home or her place of business?”

 _“Flowers.”_ She sounds surprised again. It’s not in the _what a pleasant_ sense, either. He has the distinct feeling it's in the _you poor bastard_ sense. _“That’s very sweet_.”

“Very sweet,” he echoes. “But . . .” 

_“But . . .”_ she says gently. _“Flowers mean the gentleman would like to see the lady again.”_

It’s not unkind, not at all, but his stomach flips over anyway. It’s a miserable, confused sensation dredged up from the depths of adolescence. “Madison, I—“

 _“Rick,”_ she cuts in. It’s a relief. He hasn’t the faintest idea what might have come out of his mouth next if she hadn’t cut in. _“I had a really lovely time—“_

“Well sure,” he interjects. He may be a coward—or something worse—who’s happy to let her lead them through what's turned out to be an excruciating moment, but he can't help but feel he should add _something_ to the proceedings. “All expenses paid trip to a police station. What’s not lovely about that?”

 _“Please, I will_ literally _dine out for months on that story!”  S_ he laughs. They both laugh, and the silence that descends a moment later is, if not comfortable, marginally less excruciating. He's searching for the right parting words, for the graceful exit she deserves, because she’s a lovely woman. He's working on it when she stumbles into the breach again, her voice tentative. _“You know, Rick, I asked Becks—Kate—if it was okay.”_

“O—okay?” he stammers. His heart rate kicks up. His palms sweat. He stoops to look at his warped reflection in the toaster. He half expects to see his head, topped by an awful grown-out-chia-pet haircut, bobbing on a skinny neck. “Okay?”

 _“She used to be a better liar,”_ Madison says thoughtfully, as though she hasn’t heard him. Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe they can only hear him in the Awkward Teenager Dimension. _“But I think I should have asked you, too.”_

“Asked me,” he repeats helplessly. He swallows hard. “If Beckett and I are . . .”

 _“If you two are . . .”_ she prompts.

She waits. And waits. And _waits_ until his only options are hanging up or saying it out loud. He thinks about hanging up.

“No,” he says. His stomach flips over. “Yes.” It flips again. “I don’t know.”

He used to be a better liar.


	23. Query—Overkill (2 x 23)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s on edge as they leave the precinct. She feels prickly and snappish and not really in the mood for a date, even if it's just take out and TV. Even if Tom is really easy to be with, she’s not in the mood. It’s just the case, that's all. It’s just the sudden dissolution of not one, but two leads. She makes up her mind to leave it at the precinct, for once. She makes up her mind to enjoy the evening.

> _“It does not take a genius to make the connection.”_
> 
> _—Richard Castle, Overkill (2 x 23)_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

 

She’s on edge as they leave the precinct. She feels prickly and snappish and not really in the mood for a date, even if it's just take out and TV. Even if Tom is really easy to be with, she’s not in the mood. It’s just the case, that's all. It’s just the sudden dissolution of not one, but two leads. She makes up her mind to leave it at the precinct, for once. She makes up her mind to enjoy the evening. 

“Tomorrow’s another day,” Tom says in her ear as they wait for the elevator. “We'll get him.”

“Or her.” She gives him a brisk nod and a sideways smile. “Newman says Wilder was having a screaming match with a woman.”

“Newman?” The elevator dings open. His fingertips land lightly on the small of her back and he ushers her inside. “Oh, Castle’s activist.”

The two of them turn in sync to lean against the back wall, and there’s the man himself, still standing beside her desk. He’s fixed in place, it seems, staring after them. Tom gives him a bit of a smirk and wave as the doors roll closed.

“Yeah,” she says. She shakes off a flare of irritation at the stupid little moment. “There’s a girlfriend.”

“A girlfriend,” he echoes, mulling it over. “And you think there really was a fight?”

“You don't sound like _you_ think their was.” They bump to a stop at the first floor. She heads for the exit with long strides.

“Just not sure where the books fit in.” The words are broken up by the trot he has to break into to catch up. 

“Maybe they don’t,” she snaps. She pushed through the revolving door with considerably more force than necessary, then rounds on him as he emerges behind her. “Maybe the books _are_ just a crime of opportunity, or to throw us off, or . . ." 

“Hey, I'm sorry.” He catches her hand mid-gesture. He ducks his head to meet her eyes. “I’m not trying to shut anything down here."

“I know.” The fight goes out of her. “Sorry. I’m just . . .” 

“No.” He laughs a little sheepishly and slides his fingers between hers and tugs her toward the curb. He raises his free hand, and a cab rolls to a stop. “ _I'm_ just,” he says as he opens the door for her. “I shouldn't let him get to me.”

“Him?” She slides across the seat. "Castle?"

“Stupid, right?" He settles close to her side and reclaims her hand as the cabbie eases into traffic. “I don't even get it. He says there's nothing going on, and then he’s all . . .” 

“He says?” She blinks at him. Her mind rushes right to the logical conclusion, but it takes her mouth a second to catch up. “You asked _. . . Castle?_ ”

“Oh. Busted.” He winces a little. He's grinning through it at first, but then he picks up the tension in her suddenly stiff spine. “I . . . asked.” He shifts a fraction of an inch away, literally backpedaling as though he can feel the heat coming off her skin as the blood pounds to the surface. “I asked him,” he says, shamefaced. “That was stupid, wasn't it?" 

“Stupid." It's all she can manage. Letting even that slip out is dangerous. She pulls her hand free. “Yeah, that was stupid.”

“Kate. I'm not that guy. I'm not that _kind_ of guy.” He sounds miserable. He _looks_ miserable, though she can only see that out of the corner of her eye. "I should have asked you.”

The cab coasts to the curb outside his place. There's a weighted moment and a few inches of cracked vinyl seat between them. There’s a part of her that wants to stare him down until he gets out and she doesn’t. There’s a part of her that wants to shake him down.

What, exactly, did he ask?

What, exactly, did Castle say?

There’s a part of her that throbs and aches and wants to scream because she wants to know: What would he have said to someone who just came out and asked? What would she have said?

“Yeah,” she says finally. She nudges his knee with her own, urging him toward the door. He steps on to the sidewalk. He turns back with his hand out tentatively. She fixes him with a last, long look before she relents and takes it. "You should have.”

But she’s glad he didn’t. She’s glad he doesn’t. She doesn't know, exactly, what she’d say.

 


	24. Redolent—A Deadly Game (2 x 24)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He climbs the stairs to the upper floor of the loft armed with a trash bag. A giant black plastic thing that’s absurd, given his intentions. Given its purpose.

 

> “We were always playing roles.”
> 
> —Andrea Fisher, A Deadly Game (2 x 24)
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

 

He climbs the stairs to the upper floor of the loft armed with a trash bag. A giant black plastic thing that’s absurd, given his intentions. Given its purpose.

There’s a neat row of store brand, travel-sized everything lining the shelf in the guest bathroom. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion there, and a mint green net puff looped over the shower handle. On the counter there's toothpaste and a bright purple toothbrush in the holder.

There’s a red devil rubber duck on the side of the tub. He’s responsible for that. It’s the only thing he’s responsible for, because she had to buy everything on her own when she stayed here. She insisted, and the duck was a major victory.

She'd resisted at first. She’d given him a heavy look and marched all the way to the stairs, then turned on a heel and marched right back to snatch it up. She’d given him a look that dared him to say a word—one _word_ —and marched back off again, duck in tow.

There was bubble bath at some point, he’s sure of it. There was the scent of vanilla with a sharper, spicier note underneath that rose up from her skin. None of these cheap little bottles can possibly account for. He reaches for the little red duck, here and now. He despises himself for it, but he plucks it from the edge of the tub and breathes in the scent. He lets himself remember, even though it hurts. It's shocking how much it hurts.

It somehow became a ritual, even though she’d been here for such a short time. Even though she'd only agreed, under protest, to be here at all. Still, it became a ritual. She’dmake a good faith effort to sleep, then sneak downstairs. She’d appear, barefoot in a pair of cheap leggings and a long t-shirt.

She’d rush on her toes toward the kitchen, headed for the stash of stale, generic teabags she'd bought, too. Her hair would be damp and curling against her neck, her forehead, her temples, even though she’d tried to twist it up out of the way. He’d hear her before she hit the bottom step. There was no question of sleep for him in those few days. He’d hear her and appear in the doorway to his office. He’d hover, swallowing down whatever stupid question was rising up in the moment.

_Are you . . .?_

_Can I . . . ?_

_Is there anything at all . . .?_

She’d frown from behind the counter, then beckon for him to join her. They’d sit together, mostly silent, and sip their mugs of cheap tea. There’d be the scent of vanilla and that sharp, unidentifiable spice coming off her skin.

It’s not here now, the bubble bath or whatever it was. There’s store-brand, travel-sized everything, but not one can account for the scent he remembers. The scent just clinging to the little red duck. He sets it back down on the edge of the tub. He drops the trash bag and gives in to a frantic need to search. It’s not there, though—not in the neat line on the corner shelf the shelf the shower, not in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, or under the sink, or hidden among the neatly rolled towels in the tall basket. It’s not there, and he's done with this exercise in memory. He has to be done with it.

He takes up the trash bag again, even though it's absurd. The useless little wastebasket would have been more than adequate to the task, but he takes it up. He sweeps everything off the shelf into it. He snatches up the toothbrush and the puff and shoves them inside. He snatches up the little red devil rubber duck and he can’t do it. He stands there with it poised over black mouth of the bag, and he just can’t.

He makes his way back downstairs, the bag in one hand, the stupid little thing in the other. He’ll head for the trash chute He’ll find his courage there. His anger and humiliation and self preservation will prevail. He'll let go of all this and be on his way out of the loft and the city and this absurd situation that _hurts_ with shocking ferocity. That’s his intention, but the phone is ringing.

It's always ringing—cell phone and landline and somehow both at once. They’ve literally been ringing nonstop for days, and it's enough. He’s had enough. He drops everything. The duck lands upright on the black plastic pond at his feet. He snatches up the house phone.

“I'm doing it, all right?” He doesn’t bother with a greeting. “I'm finishing it. I will.” The wave of anger crashes against some breakwater inside him. It rushes back out leaving hurt behind. He realizes, helplessly, that this is how it will be from now on. This is how he'll feel until he remembers how _not_ to feel much of anything again. “I’m going, ok?"

There’s silence on the other end of the line. A long silence, and then her voice.

 _“Oh, Richard_ ,” she says. “ _What happened?”_

She’s annoyed with him. She's disappointed and frustrated in a way he understands exactly, and if it’s not comforting, it's comfortable. It’s familiar and _known,_ and for now it takes up the chaotic edge of everything and snaps it high into the air. It settles into a path that’s walled and narrow and utterly unsurprising.

He looks down at his feet. The little red duck floats on a black plastic pond, and it hurts. It’s shocking how much it hurts, but this, at least, is a way out.

“Nothing happened." He stoops to gather up the bag. He snatches up the duck with ruthless fingers and shoves it deep inside. He wedges the phone between ear and shoulder and raises his voice over the static as he makes his way toward the trash chute. “I just need to get away. You should come.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for Season 2. This ends up longer than I'd intended, as most of these sketches ended up being more than 500 words each. My only excuse for myself is the 8000 words I did cut along the way! 
> 
> Thanks very much for reading.


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